Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) was forced to cancel a rally in her home state on Sunday in response to a raucous Black Lives Matter protest, which lasted for over an hour and featured protesters taking over the stage after &#8220;a deal&#8221; between the protesters and the campaign fell apart. Video of the incident has circulated widely online.
The home state protest of Klobuchar was fueled by her past role as a prosecutor in the conviction of an African-American teenager, Myon Burrell, who, activists believe, may have been wrongly convicted. Amid growing attention on the case, protesters converged on Klobuchar&#8217;s rally in St. Louis Park, Minnesota on Sunday evening.
&#8220;Organizers gathered outside of St. Louis Park High School with signs and megaphones in support that Burrell was wrongfully convicted in 2002. Klobuchar was the Hennepin County attorney at the time,&#8221; <a href="https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2020/03/01/protesters-for-myon-burrell-delay-klobuchars-rally-in-minnesota/">CBS Minnesota</a> reported Sunday. &#8220;The protesters made their way into the rally and onto the stage, which delayed Klobuchar’s rally scheduled to start at 8 p.m. After about a 40-minute delay, the rally was confirmed to be canceled.&#8221;
As video posted by CBC News campaign reporter Nicole Sganga shows, the protesters completely took over the event.
&#8220;Protesters in Senator Klobuchar’s home state have stormed the stage at her campaign rally, with dozens chanting, &#8216;Free Myon!&#8217; and &#8216;Klobuchar has got to go!&#8221;&#8221; Sganga reported on social media along with footage of the event. &#8220;Protesters chanting &#8216;Black Lives Matter&#8217; and &#8216;Free Myon&#8217; have now occupied Senator Amy Klobuchar’s rally for well over an hour, taking over the stage and effectively shutting down the campaign event. The rally in Klobuchar’s home state was slated to begin ten minutes ago.&#8221;
Sganga also reported that Klobuchar&#8217;s campaign attempted to &#8220;arrange a deal with protesters&#8221; before choosing to cancel the event entirely, which the campaign confirmed in a statement.
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Protesters chanting “Black Lives Matter” and “Free Myon” have now occupied Senator Amy Klobuchar’s rally for well over an hour, taking over the stage and effectively shutting down the campaign event. 
The rally in Klobuchar’s home state was slated to begin ten minutes ago. <a href="https://t.co/B0iTyExXQ0">pic.twitter.com/B0iTyExXQ0</a>
&mdash; Nicole Sganga (@NicoleSganga) <a href="https://twitter.com/NicoleSganga/status/1234300379040493568?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 2, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Attendees are leaving the Klobuchar rally as protests continue.
A Klobuchar campaign official says the campaign is actively attempting to arrange a deal with protesters at her rally in St. Louis Park, MN. <a href="https://t.co/06jXLj9eyo">pic.twitter.com/06jXLj9eyo</a>
&mdash; Nicole Sganga (@NicoleSganga) <a href="https://twitter.com/NicoleSganga/status/1234303175617908737?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 2, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Klobuchar&#8217;s campaign has since issued a statement to the press explaining why they decided to shut down the event. &#8220;The campaign offered a meeting with the Senator if they (protesters) would leave the stage after being on stage for more than an hour,&#8221; said the campaign. &#8220;After the group initially agreed, they backed out of the agreement and we are canceling the event.&#8221;
As reported by the <a href="https://apnews.com/115076e2bd194cfa7560cb4642ab8038">Associated Press</a> last month, the Burrell case has gained increased attention amid new evidence. After conducting a review of &#8220;thousand pages of police records, court transcripts and interrogation tapes,&#8221; and having &#8220;interviewed dozens of inmates, witnesses, family members, former gang leaders, lawyers and criminal justice experts,&#8221; AP suggests that Burrell, now 33, should not have been convicted for the death of an 11-year-old girl, Tyesha Edwards, in 2002.
&#8220;An Associated Press investigation into the 17-year-old case uncovered new evidence and myriad inconsistencies, raising questions about whether he was railroaded by police,&#8221; AP reports. Burrell, who is still behind bars, continues to maintain his innocence and has rejected all plea deals. Some of the problems with the case detailed in the report include:
<blockquote>The case relied heavily on a teen rival of Burrell’s who gave conflicting accounts when identifying the shooter, who was largely obscured behind a wall 120 feet away.
With no other eyewitnesses, police turned to multiple jailhouse snitches. Some have since recanted, saying they were coached or coerced. Others were given reduced time, raising questions about their credibility. And the lead homicide detective offered “major dollars” for names, even if it was hearsay.
There was no gun, fingerprints, or DNA. Alibis were never seriously pursued. Key evidence has gone missing or was never obtained, including a convenience store surveillance tape that Burrell and others say would have cleared him.</blockquote>
This article has been revised for clarity.

Amy Klobuchar

WATCH: Klobuchar Cancels Rally After Black Lives Matter Protesters Take Over Event

2020 Election

Black Lives Matter

Race

Before former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg threw his hat into the 2020 presidential race, he defended the New York Police Department&#8217;s use of &#8220;stop, question and frisk&#8221; policing. At a United States Naval Academy&#8217;s 2019 Leadership Conference, Bloomberg said, &#8220;We focused on keeping kids from going through the correctional system &#8230; kids who walked around looking like they might have a gun, remove the gun from their pockets and stop it.&#8221; He claimed that as a result of his policy, New York&#8217;s murder rate fell from 650 a year to 300 the year he left office.
In the cases of Terry v. Ohio, Sibron v. New York, and Peters v. New York, the U.S. Supreme Court, in 1968, granted limited approval to officers to stop, question and frisk, even though they lacked probable cause for an arrest, if the officer believed the subject to be dangerous. The Court&#8217;s decision made suspicion of danger to an officer grounds for a &#8220;reasonable search.&#8221;
The stop, question and frisk policy has taken on racial overtones because most of the people stopped are black men. Let&#8217;s look at the numbers. Last year, NYPD data showed that 93% of suspects arrested for murder were black or Hispanic. Ninety-six percent of those nabbed in shootings were also minorities. Eighty-eight percent of New York City&#8217;s homicide victims were black or Hispanic as were 96% of shooting victims. While these percentages have been roughly the same for decades, New York police have brought the absolute number of crimes, including homicides, way down from its 1990 peak at 2,245 to 289 homicides in 2018. Since blacks and Hispanics are the major victims of homicide, as a result of the NYPD&#8217;s proactive response to crime, possibly tens of thousands of blacks are living today who would otherwise be dead.
For a law-abiding black person to be stopped, questioned and frisked — in a word or two, be racially profiled — is truly insulting. However, to analyze the policy, let&#8217;s look at the origins of racial profiling or any other kind of profiling. First of all, policemen are neither mind readers nor are they equipped with X-ray vision. That means good policing requires learning how to use an easily observed physical characteristic as a guess or proxy for some other difficult-to-observe characteristic. Thus, the reason people profile is that information is costly and they seek methods to economize on information costs. One way to do that is through profiling.
The reality is that race and other behavioral characteristics are correlated, including criminal behavior. That fact does not dispel the insult, embarrassment, anger and hurt a law-abiding black person might feel when being stopped by police, being watched in stores, being passed by taxi drivers, standing at traffic lights and hearing car door locks activated or being refused delivery by merchants who fear for their safety in his neighborhood.
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a politician in pursuit of his own agenda. President Donald Trump is also a politician in pursuit of his own agenda. Both will deny their support for and talk down the policy of stop, question and frisk in an effort to curry favor with black voters. Most Bloomberg and Trump supporters don&#8217;t live under the horrible conditions that so many blacks live under in high crime cities like Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago and Detroit. Black people must ask what needs to be done to stop criminals from preying on them and making so many of their communities economic wastelands. If stop, question and frisk can contribute to that goal, so be it. They need not listen to politicians, academics, talking heads on the news and others.
I&#8217;ll add that even if the police, intimidated by leftists, are not doing their job to safeguard black residents in high crime communities, that doesn&#8217;t mean that black people should not organize to take independent measures to protect themselves.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

NYPD car

WILLIAMS: Stop, Question And Frisk

Crime

Donald Trump

Michael Bloomberg

Police

Stop-and-frisk

Billionaire Presidential Candidate Mike Bloomberg is disdainful of ordinary people, disrespectful of their freedom and arrogantly convinced he can run their lives better than they can. So far, he sounds like a model Democrat. Unfortunately, he did something in his past that was such a violation of party rules it may cost him the nomination: he told some truths about black Americans.
Even before Elizabeth Warren smacked him around during Wednesday’s debate like he was a john in a kinky dungeon, Bloomberg had been forced to apologize to Democrat minority voters. They are so used to being lied to by their party, the simple truths he told struck them as an insult.
To be sure, Bloomberg has a contemptuous way of expressing himself. But black voters shouldn’t hear that as racism. He’s like that with everyone who doesn’t happen to be himself. As for the rest of what he said, he was giving it to them straight.
In 2015, the former New York City mayor spoke to the Aspen Institute about Stop and Frisk, a policy designed to let cops find and confiscate illegal guns.
&#8220;You want to spend the money, put a lot of cops on the streets, put those cops where the crime is, which means minority neighborhoods,&#8221; he said. “Ninety-five percent of your murders — murderers and murder victims — fit one M.O. You can just take the description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16 to 25.&#8221;
New York leftists — who seem to oppose all guns except those in the hands of criminals — took the city to court and a federal judge high-handedly ruled Stop and Frisk unconstitutional. But before that error, the policy was doing exactly what it was designed to do. In the course of a decade, it removed about 8,000 illegal guns from the street, and, along with other tough policing measures, helped prevent an estimated 7,000 murders. Most of the lives saved were black and Hispanic because, yes, theirs are the neighborhoods where most murders take place. Now that socialist mayor Bill de Blasio is going soft on crime, New York violence is on the rise again.
Bloomberg’s 2008 comments on the financial crash were also blunt but also true.
&#8220;It all started back when there was a lot of pressure on banks to make loans to everyone,&#8221; Bloomberg said at a forum at Georgetown University. &#8220;Redlining, if you remember, was the term where banks took whole neighborhoods and said, &#8216;People in these neighborhoods are poor, they&#8217;re not going to be able to pay off their mortgages, tell your salesmen don&#8217;t go into those areas. And then Congress got involved — local elected officials, as well — and said, &#8216;Oh that&#8217;s not fair, these people should be able to get credit.&#8217; And once you started pushing in that direction, banks started making more and more loans where the credit of the person buying the house wasn&#8217;t as good as you would like.&#8221;
The accusation that banks avoided neighborhoods because of race was false. According to reporting in the New York Times, the policy was based on economics, as Bloomberg said, though because of racial economic disparities black people bore the brunt.
Once the banks were hectored into making bad loans by Democrats like then-Congressman Barney Frank, those loans worked their way into the financial system through Wall Street.  When housing prices dropped, the whole system crashed.
Again, in 2011, while pushing a 127-million dollar plan to help minorities in the workplace, Bloomberg said, “There&#8217;s this enormous cohort of black and Latino males, age, let’s say, 16 to 25, that don&#8217;t have jobs, don&#8217;t have any prospects, don&#8217;t know how to find jobs, don&#8217;t know what their skill sets are, don&#8217;t know how to behave in the workplace where they have to work collaboratively and collectively.”
Would any honest American of any color say this wasn’t true?
Bloomberg’s dismissive tone is a problem, and one conservatives could learn from. The troubles in some poor minority communities — and in poor communities in general — are not just statistics. They have to be addressed with compassion and creativity. Even when tough policing is required, it is not a sin against honesty to remember that the kid being arrested is some mother’s son who may have had some tough breaks in life.
But how can we address the problems at all, if we’re not allowed to acknowledge their existence?
I’m no Bloomberg fan, but he was a decent mayor who managed to preserve the miraculous transformation of the city wrought by Rudy Giuliani and his great top cops. If in order to be a Democrat, he has to start lying to black people, he should find a better party.
And so should black people.

Mike Bloomberg

KLAVAN: Lying To Black People: It’s The Democrat Way

Democratic Party

A video of a brawl breaking out between two self-described Bernie fans, one white and one black, has gone viral — and initially inspired a bunch of assumptions about what started it, including that a &#8220;Trump supporter&#8221; infiltrated the event to stir up trouble. But a video posted later and a pair of interviews with two men claiming to be the ones involved indicate that the blow up was ultimately about the African-American man&#8217;s &#8220;Black Guns Matter&#8221; T-shirt, which the white &#8220;Bernie bro&#8221; condemned as &#8220;racist.&#8221;
The fight broke out during a Sanders rally held at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver Sunday evening. The initial fight was caught on camera by Colorado&#8217;s CBS4. The video of the sudden eruption of violence, which occurred at the back of the rally near the media risers, rapidly circulated online.
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At last night’s Bernie Sanders rally in Colorado, the Bernie rally briefly turned into a Bernie vs Bernie brawl 😂😂 Notice in the background, Bernie’s speech is uninterrupted! 😂😂 <a href="https://t.co/c6Dq8H24GZ">pic.twitter.com/c6Dq8H24GZ</a>
&mdash; Shawnasaurus Rex (@ShawnG927) <a href="https://twitter.com/ShawnG927/status/1229749115434782725?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 18, 2020</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;CBS4’s news camera was capturing video of the event when two men began fighting,&#8221; <a href="https://denver.cbslocal.com/2020/02/17/video-fight-bernie-sanders-rally-denver/">CBS4</a> reported. &#8220;They pushed through a metal barrier fence toward the back near the media risers as they grappled with each other and one man knocked the other down onto the ground after lifting him up. They both landed on the ground partially under the stage Sanders was in the middle of delivering his speech from. Friends of both people quickly intervened and after some more shoving successfully broke up the fight.&#8221;
CBS4&#8217;s crew said that they were initially unsure what started the scuffle, but on Monday, the outlet was contacted first by a man, Tyler, a self-described Sanders supporter who said he was the white guy shown duking it out in the video, then by another man who asked to remain anonymous who said he was the African-American man battling with Tyler. Another video involving the incident, this one before the fight broke out, shows Tyler and the African-American man arguing over the latter&#8217;s &#8220;Black Guns Matter&#8221; shirt.
The first to contact CBS4 Monday was &#8220;Tyler,&#8221; who told the outlet that a man with a &#8220;&#8216;Black Guns Matter&#8221; shirt was with two other men &#8220;and they were booing during the speech,&#8221; CBS reports. &#8220;When Tyler tried to capture video of the booing on his phone’s camera, the man shoved him through the barrier. Tyler then retaliated. It was that action which was captured by CBS4’s camera.&#8221;
After the interview with Tyler, CBS4 was provided with a new video from an anonymous source showing the argument leading up to the blow-up. The outlet was then contacted by a man claiming to the &#8220;Black Guns Matter&#8221; shirt-wearer, who described himself as African-American and said the whole thing started over his shirt.
&#8220;He had a problem with the shirt I was wearing,&#8221; the man told CBS4. &#8220;I was recording the event, he walks up and calls me a racist. But I thought, ‘What’s he know about black lives, about discrimination, or, for that matter, the representation of the shirt.'&#8221;
&#8220;Black people and their ability to own firearms has historically been very restricted,&#8221; he added. &#8220;The shirt I got from a conceal-carry class.&#8221;
The man also told CBS4 that he agrees with Sanders on most policies but not on guns.
&#8220;I think it’s really a sad thing at a Bernie rally, when someone has a difference of opinion, that someone would be treated like that,&#8221; he added. &#8220;I thought it really would be a lot more inclusive than that. It’s not a safe place to express differences. I would expect that sort of thing at a Trump rally.&#8221;
Below is the video that appears to have been sent to CBS4:
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Here’s the reason for the brawl: White guy called Black guy a racist at a Bernie rally. <a href="https://t.co/cJouk3Kvri">pic.twitter.com/cJouk3Kvri</a>
&mdash; Deirdra Lichtenberge (@diamondsoul317) <a href="https://twitter.com/diamondsoul317/status/1229628620643217410?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 18, 2020</a></blockquote>
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&nbsp;

Bernie Sanders

WATCH: Brawl Breaks Out At Sanders Rally; Video Shows What Started It: ‘Black Guns Matter’ Shirt

Guns

Second Amendment

&#8220;OK, boomer&#8221; is the new N-word?
That&#8217;s what a University of Oklahoma journalism professor says.
In case you&#8217;re not perusing reddit.com or Tik Tok daily, the term &#8220;OK, boomer&#8221; is a put down. &#8220;OK boomer is a viral internet slang phrase used, often in a humorous or ironic manner, to call out or dismiss out-of-touch or close-minded opinions associated with the baby boomer generation and older people more generally,&#8221; dictionary.com says.
Peter Gade, director of graduate studies at the university’s Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, decided the phrase was tantamount to the N word &#8212; and actually used the racial slur during a class when declaring his opinion. &#8220;Calling someone a boomer is like calling someone a n***er,&#8221; he said, according to the college&#8217;s newspaper, <a href="http://www.oudaily.com/news/ou-gaylord-college-professor-uses-racial-slur-during-class-in/article_ddf0496e-4cff-11ea-9e80-fbaf7ab99bc3.html">OU Daily</a>.
The university immediately called out the professor.
&#8220;Today a professor stated in his senior journalism class that there is an equivalence between the offensiveness of &#8216;OK, Boomer&#8217; and the use of the &#8216;N-word,&#8217; using the actual word itself,&#8221; interim president Joseph Harroz Jr. said in a <a href="http://www.ou.edu/web/news_events/articles/news_2020/statement-from-interim-president-harroz-feb-11">statement</a>.
&#8220;While the professor’s comments are protected by the First Amendment and academic freedom, his comment and word choice are fundamentally offensive and wrong,&#8221; Harroz said. &#8220;The use of the most offensive word, by a person in a position of authority, hurt and minimized those in the classroom and beyond. Our University must serve as an example to our society of both freedom of expression and understanding and tolerance. His words today failed to meet this standard. #WeAre speaks for our community; his words today do not.&#8221;
OU&#8217;s chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists also condemned the incident. &#8220;We are not surprised by the actions of the professor who ironically teaches Journalism, Ethics and Democracy,&#8221; the group said in a statement. &#8220;Nor are we surprised that people still don’t understand that insults like ‘OK, boomer&#8217; do not create the same uneasiness that the historical slur ni**er does.&#8221;
Ed Kelley, dean of Gaylord College, told the OU Daily that university officials plan to investigate the incident.
&#8220;We wanted to hear from (the students) exactly, not only what was said, but in the context what was said. And then just importantly, their reaction to what was said,&#8221; Kelley said. &#8220;We also are going to reach out today and try to talk to the African American students who are in the class &#8230; We want to get their perspective as well, if they want to share with us, and they don&#8217;t have to.&#8221;
<blockquote>
Kelley said students have shared with them that they feel uncomfortable, but they are in a “fact-finding” mode right now to hear from as many students as possible, then to share what they’ve learned with Gade and pursue next steps.
“We&#8217;re going to try to figure out a way that we can resolve &#8230; the real issues that they have, in a way that we can all here in the college go forward,” Kelley said. “We&#8217;re trying to work through this as best we know how, and I think the best process that we know has to be as open and aboveboard as we can be and, listening to students today is job one.”
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Iowa State v Oklahoma

Journalism Professor Blasted For Comparing ‘OK, Boomer’ To N-Word

Education

Oklahoma

New <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/284033/americans-improved-mixed.aspx">Gallup polling</a> shows a double-digit increase (14%) in the state of race relations since President Donald Trump took office — a far cry from what the mainstream media airwaves echo to viewers every day.
&#8220;Gallup’s survey demonstrates numerous categories in which the President has improved the lives of Americans since relieving Barack Obama of his duties in January of 2017,&#8221; <a href="https://thepoliticalinsider.com/gallup-poll-race-relations-see-double-digit-increase-since-trump-entered-white-house/">The Political Insider</a> reported Tuesday on the polling.
&#8220;The polling indicates double-digit improvements in how Americans view the nation’s economy, security from terrorism, military strength and … the state of race relations,&#8221; the report added.
According to Gallup, “the position of blacks and other racial minorities, the distribution of income and wealth, and the opportunity for a person to get ahead through hard work&#8221; have all increased under President Trump.
The Political Insider summed up: &#8220;The position of blacks and other racial minorities in the nation rose 9 percent since Obama’s last day in office, while the state of race relations in America shot up 14 percent.&#8221;
As noted by the outlet, CBS reporter Major Garrett commented last month that any president would be happy to oversee such numbers.
“It can be fairly said that this administration, because of President Trump’s quiet prodding, has done quite a bit for funding of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, the First Step Act, which was a massive first step toward criminal justice reform,&#8221; Garrett stated.
“That is a legacy on the agenda side that almost any president after three years would want to claim, particularly President Obama,” the reporter noted.
Though the outlook was generally sunny for race relations under then-President Barack Obama, the reality was anything but. Mr. Obama&#8217;s penchant for interjecting racial narrative, even in local cases, was, no doubt, a catalyst for racial tension in the United States.
The <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38536668">BBC</a>, which leans entirely Left, begrudgingly admitted this much in January 2017.
&#8220;Race relations have arguably become more polarised and tenser since 20 January 2009. Though smaller in scale and scope, the demonstrations sparked by police shootings of unarmed black men were reminiscent of the turbulence of the 1960s,&#8221; the BBC said.
&#8220;The toxic cloud from the tear gas unleashed in Ferguson and elsewhere cast a long and sometimes overwhelming shadow,&#8221; the outlet added. &#8220;Not since the LA riots in 1992 &#8211; the violent response to the beating of Rodney King and the later acquittal of the police officers filmed assaulting him &#8211; has the sense of black grievance and outrage been so raw.&#8221;
The BBC noted that the Obama years &#8220;gave rise&#8221; to the controversial racially-charged movement Black Lives Matter and highlighted a significant drop in Americans regarding racial relations as good. &#8220;Not long after he took office in 2009, a New York Times/CBS News poll suggested two-thirds of Americans regarded race relations as generally good,&#8221; the BBC reported. &#8220;In the midst of last summer&#8217;s racial turbulence, that poll found there had been a complete reversal. Now 69% of Americans assessed race relations to be mostly bad.&#8221;
In 2016, then-candidate Trump urged the black community to take a chance on him, famously asking, &#8220;What do you have to lose?&#8221;
H/t <a href="https://thepoliticalinsider.com/gallup-poll-race-relations-see-double-digit-increase-since-trump-entered-white-house/">Political Insider</a>

President Donald Trump And Former President Barack Obama

Poll Shows Double-Digit Increase In Race Relations Since Trump Took Office. CBS Reporter: Obama Would Be Envious

With the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses only a week away and the New Hampshire primary drawing ever closer, the political commentariat are overflowing with opinion pieces about the early-voting states. Now, one progressive columnist wants you to sop up another drop of wisdom: Iowa and New Hampshire voting first is actually racist. 
According to New York Times opinion writer David Leonhardt: 
<blockquote>The strongest part of the case for change, of course, is the racial aspect of the current calendar. Iowa and New Hampshire are among the country’s whitest states. About 6 percent of their combined population is black or Asian-American. Almost 87 percent is non-Hispanic white, compared with 60 percent for the country as a whole. Demographically, Iowa and New Hampshire look roughly like the America of 1870….
The typical defense from Iowa officials is that their state can be trusted because it once voted for a black man (Barack Obama) — which is a pretty stark bit of paternalism.
In truth, the whiteness of Iowa and New Hampshire matters. Consider that Cory Booker and Kamala Harris were doing as well as Amy Klobuchar in early polls of more diverse states; they led Pete Buttigieg in some polls. But Booker and Harris are finished, in no small part because of their struggles in Iowa and New Hampshire. Klobuchar and Buttigieg still might break out.</blockquote>
In the piece, Leonhardt says that Iowa and New Hampshire owe their early-voting status, in part, to circumstances that are no longer relevant — a complex delegate system for Iowa, and weather-related, cost-saving reasons for New Hampshire. 
But now that those factors no longer play a large role in the early-state voting, Leonhardt asserts, people in favor of allowing Iowa and New Hampshire to continue the early-voting tradition usually say that “the good people there take extra care in selecting candidates.” 
<blockquote>But step back and think about how paternalistic and condescending that explanation is. The residents of New Jersey, New Mexico, Indiana, Louisiana and other late-voting states somehow aren’t sufficiently civic-minded or intelligent to choose their own presidential candidates? They always need the same two states to winnow the field?</blockquote>
Furthermore, Leonhardt decries the early-voting tradition as “another form of privilege for groups that already benefit from the senate and electoral college,” and implores people to consider allowing other states to vote first next election. 
At the conclusion of the piece, he sums up the “argument” of a typical Iowa or New Hampshire citizen in favor of keeping the early-voting tradition: “We’re better than the rest of you, and we deserve special treatment forever.”
As Leonhardt notes, former Housing Secretary Julian Castro also proposed moving away from the early-voting states in favor of states with more racial diversity. According to Politico, the proposal drew a response from the Republican and Democratic party chairs in Iowa, who issued a joint statement praising the state’s first-in-the-nation status. 
“Every four years, presidential candidates show up in America’s heartland to make their case to Iowa voters — visiting our coffee shops, farms, the great Iowa State Fair, small businesses, factories and everywhere in between,” Jeff Kaufmann, the Iowa Republican Party chairman, and Troy Price, the Iowa Democratic Party chairman, wrote in the statement, reports the news agency. “Those who put in the work of true retail politics — answering tough questions from educated voters, showing up at local events and making themselves available to average Americans — can and will do well.”
“This means anyone can come to Iowa, even with a small budget, and have a shot at being the president of the greatest country in the world,” the statement continues. 
Castro shot back by implying the party chairs were racist, lambasting the state Republican Party for joining “hands with the Iowa Democratic Party to defend a caucus system that actively diminishes the voices of African Americans and people of color in the Democratic presidential nominating process.”
“I guess that’s not surprising for the party of Steve King,” said Castro, referring to the Republican congressman who has been <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-steve-king-defends-himself-says-he-has-frank-camp">widely condemned</a> by liberals and conservatives, and has since been stripped of committee assignments.

Presidential Candidate Elizabeth Warren Campaigns In Eastern Iowa

NYT Columnist: ‘Form Of White Privilege’ For Iowa To Vote First

Iowa

New York Times

Starting next year, Yale University will no longer offer “Introduction to Art History: Renaissance to Present,” a once-renowned survey course of art through Western Civilization, because it has been deemed insufficiently inclusive of non-European artwork. 
According to the <a href="https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2020/01/24/art-history-department-to-scrap-survey-course/">Yale Daily News</a>, Tim Barringer, chair of the Art History department and instructor for the course, believes that focusing on the Western canon and its most influential works is “problematic” because it comes at the expense of focusing on other regions, genres, and traditions that are “equally deserving of study.”
“I want all Yale students (and all residents of New Haven who can enter our museums freely) to have access to and to feel confident analyzing and enjoying the core works of the western tradition. But I don’t mistake a history of European painting for the history of all art in all places,” Barringer told the news agency in an email. 
The news agency notes that while the course was once considered &#8220;quintessential,&#8221; the decision is the “latest response to student uneasiness over an idealized Western ‘canon’ – a product of an overwhelmingly white, straight European and male cadre of artists.”
While the course will still be offered for the duration of the term, the news agency notes that the topics in the course have changed significantly over time. Now, the curriculum will emphasize the relationship between works from Western and non-Western countries, and students will be encouraged to consider the ways the artwork relates to race, gender, class, capitalism, and climate change.
Mahlon Sorenson, a student at the university, has called the decision a “disservice to undergrads,” reports the news agency. 
“If you get rid of that one, all-encompassing course, then to understand the Western canon of art, students are going to have to take multiple art history courses. Which is all well and good for the art history major, but it sucks for the rest of us, which, I would say, make up the vast majority of the people who are taking [the course],” says Sorenson. 
However, the change to the curriculum is aligned with what Maria Bass, the director of Undergraduate Studies at Yale University, has said is the direction of introductory survey courses – they should be “designed in recognition of an essential truth: that there has never been just one story of the history of art.”
Camille Paglia, a Yale alumnus and professor at the University of Arts in Philadelphia, has gained notoriety for slamming left-wing activists who have declared war on art history survey courses and the Western Canon. 
“As a student of the history of the arts, I can assure people that the Canon, overwhelmingly so, is the result of what artist have determined – we say a work is important, is canonical, because artists following it were influenced by it,” Paglia told psychology professor Jordan Peterson during an interview in 2017. 
“All these faculty members teaching their little tiny courses that has to do with their own specialty, that’s got to stop,” said Paglia. “They must teach in the core curriculum. People must decide what is crucial for an educated person to know.”

Views Of Yale University As Ivy League Pay Soars

Yale Scraps ‘Quintessential’ Course Now Deemed Too White, ‘Problematic’

Yale

An Hispanic police captain in Miami has been suspended after sparking outrage at a public meeting last week when he claimed that he identifies as a black man because of the &#8220;one-drop rule.&#8221; His declaration came in response to being accused of falsely labeling himself as black on police exams in order to get a promotion.
Miami Police Department Capt. Javier Ortiz was called before city commissioners last Friday to address accusations that, after having identified himself as a white Hispanic man on previous documents, Ortiz changed his racial identity to black on multiple police exams in recent years as an attempt to get a promotion.
Though Ortiz admitted during the meeting that he has identified himself in the past as white and Hispanic, he insisted he now disavows that identity. &#8220;I&#8217;m a Black male. Yes, I am,&#8221; Ortiz told the commissioners at the meeting. &#8220;And I am not Hispanic.&#8221;
&#8220;So the question is why is it that every time he finishes an exam, he goes back to white Hispanic male?&#8221; asked Sgt. Stanley Jean-Poix, president of the Miami Community Police Benevolent Association, which <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/hispanic-miami-police-captain-under-fire-claiming-he-s-black-n1119706">NBC News</a> notes is predominately black.
&#8220;Well, I learned that there are people in my family that are mixed, that are black,&#8221; said Ortiz. &#8220;And if you know anything about the one-drop rule, which started in the 20th century, which is what identifies and defines what a black man is, or a Negro.&#8221;
The &#8220;one-drop rule,&#8221; as the <a href="https://www.miamitimesonline.com/news/criminal-investigation-led-to-suspension-of-miami-police-cpt-javier/article_0d74518a-3d92-11ea-8b4e-87e089b17e34.html">Miami Times</a> notes, is a &#8220;centuries-old reference to assigning Black or minority status to persons of mixed-race.&#8221;
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Amid calls for his termination from the Miami Community PBA and the local chapter of the NAACP, on Wednesday, Police Chief Jorge Colina revealed that Ortiz had been &#8220;relieved of duty&#8221; indefinitely.
&#8220;In the coming days, I will be meeting with the Chief to further discuss,&#8221; Miami Mayor Francis Suarez told NBC News in a statement Wednesday. &#8220;In the meantime, all law enforcement involved discipline is handled by the City of Miami Police Department.&#8221;
Jean-Poix celebrated the decision but made clear it&#8217;s not enough. &#8220;We’re thrilled; it’s about time; and it’s a step in the right direction,&#8221; he said, as reported by Miami News. &#8220;We’re looking for his full termination.&#8221;
Jean-Poix also wants Chief Colina removed. The union president&#8217;s demand that Ortiz be fired was included in a document submitted to the department declaring &#8220;no confidence&#8221; in Colina&#8217;s leadership and detailing a series of racial discrimination allegations against the department. &#8220;Submitted were incidents and summary reports intended to document how Black officers received disparate treatment with regard to discipline, promotions and widespread violations of training and internal affairs protocols,&#8221; the Miami Times notes.
The NAACP&#8217;s Miami-Dade Branch is also putting pressure on the department to fire Ortiz for his &#8220;incendiary&#8221; comments. &#8220;The city should be made aware that the statement he made is incendiary,&#8221; NAACP Miami-Dade Chairman Rubin Roberts told <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article239485398.html">The Miami Herald</a> on Tuesday. &#8220;He&#8217;s not in any way considerate of black men or women&#8217;s plight.&#8221;
Before making the decision to suspend Ortiz, Colina said Tuesday that he was meeting with attorney and human resource officers to determine how best to move forward. &#8220;You can’t make a knee-jerk decision. I don’t want to be sued by the FOP [Fraternal Order of Police union],&#8221; said Colina, as reported by the Herald. &#8220;I know a lot of people are emotional about it. It’s perplexing to me as well.&#8221;
Colina also made a point of saying that Ortiz listing himself as a black man on promotion exams did not impact his score.
The Herald points out that Colina suspended Ortiz three years ago &#8220;after a judge placed a restraining order against him for the incessant hassling of a woman who videotaped a cop giving her a ticket,&#8221; while NBC notes that four years ago Ortiz wrote a letter to the police union &#8220;threatening to boycott Beyoncé&#8217;s Miami concert performances after declaring her 2016 Super Bowl performance &#8216;anti-police.'&#8221;
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Miami Police

Hispanic Miami Police Captain Suspended After Saying He Identifies As Black

Law Enforcement

On Friday, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) held a town hall-style event at a bowling alley in Petersborough, New Hampshire.
During the event, one woman asked Warren the following question about her ancestry: “What do I say to my native american relatives regarding the confusion around the native american ancestry issue?”
Warren replied:
<blockquote>I grew up in Oklahoma, and my three older brothers and I learned about our family [the] same way most people do – from our mom and from our dad. My family’s very important to me, and that’s why many years ago I sometimes identified as Native American.
Boston Globe did a big investigation about this, gosh, what about a year and a half ago, never had anything to do with any job I ever got or any benefit.
But even so, I shouldn’t have done it. I am not a person of color; I am not a citizen of a tribe; and I have apologized for confusion I’ve caused on tribal citizenship, tribal sovereignty, and for any harm that I’ve caused.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Whoa&#8230;
This is quite the admission from Elizabeth Warren on previously identifying as Native American:
“I shouldn’t have done it. I am not a person of color, I am not a citizen of a tribe. And I have apologized for confusion I have caused”<a href="https://t.co/ErjPhVb62h">pic.twitter.com/ErjPhVb62h</a>
— Nathan Brand (@NathanBrandWA) <a href="https://twitter.com/NathanBrandWA/status/1203053849478602753?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 6, 2019</a></blockquote>
Sen. Warren has been dogged by the question regarding her ancestry for years. Even President Trump took to calling the senator “Pocahontas,” and dared her to take a DNA test.
In October 2018, Warren released a video in which she spoke with Stanford Professor Carlos D. Bustamante, who had conducted a DNA analysis on the senator in order to get to the bottom of the heritage question.
According to Bustamante, who “used samples from Mexico, Peru, and Colombia to stand in for Native American” due to a lack of available DNA from verified Native Americans, reports <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2018/10/15/warren-addresses-native-american-issue/YEUaGzsefB0gPBe2AbmSVO/story.html?et_rid=654126300&amp;s_campaign=todaysheadlines:newsletter">The Boston Globe</a>, Warren had a Native American ancestor “in the range of 6-10 generations ago.”
Warren’s DNA test stunt troubled some in the Native American community.
Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-warren-i-have-more-indian-blood-she-does-frank-camp">said</a> that the use of “a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong &#8230; dishonoring legitimate tribal governments and their citizens, whose ancestors are well documented and whose heritage is [proven].”
Warren allegedly reached out an apologized, after which Hoskins <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/02/01/690806434/warren-apologizes-to-cherokee-nation-for-dna-test">stated</a>: “We are encouraged by this dialogue and understanding that being a Cherokee Nation tribal citizen is rooted in centuries of culture and laws not through DNA tests. We are encouraged by her action and hope that the slurs and mockery of tribal citizens and Indian history and heritage will now come to an end.”
In February, Cherokee Nation citizen Rebecca Nagle dragged Warren, <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/am-joy/watch/trump-appears-to-joke-about-trail-of-tears-in-tweet-about-elizabeth-warren-1440281667740">stating</a> in part:
<blockquote>Warren has zero Cherokee ancestry. Genealogists in 2012 did her genealogy. That’s what Cherokee genealogists do when somebody claims to be Cherokee &#8230; [Warren] comes from a line of very well-documented white people, going back to before the Trail of Tears&#8230;
There are over forty-five rolls of Cherokee people between the 1810s and the 1910s, and Cherokee genealogists went [and] looked up Warren’s family tree and then crossed-referenced her relatives with those forty-five rolls and looked for them, and they’re not there. So there is no evidence that she has a single Cherokee ancestor. The only evidence she has is this race-based science of a DNA test which you cannot use to lay claim to any tribe or any relationship to any tribe, and people don’t know that.</blockquote>
Warren’s troubles have continued. In February, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/elizabeth-warren-apologizes-for-calling-herself-native-american/2019/02/05/1627df76-2962-11e9-984d-9b8fba003e81_story.html?noredirect=on">The Washington Post</a> uncovered the senator’s 1986 “registration card for the State Bar of Texas.” On the card, Warren lists her race as “American Indian.”
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Here is the form Elizabeth Warren filled out for the State Bar of Texas claiming American Indian heritage. <a href="https://t.co/VwHifS7BCL">pic.twitter.com/VwHifS7BCL</a>
— Amy Gardner (@AmyEGardner) <a href="https://twitter.com/AmyEGardner/status/1092941590555971585?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 6, 2019</a></blockquote>
“The Texas bar registration card is significant, among other reasons, because it removes any doubt that Warren directly claimed the identity,” wrote Annie Linskey and Amy Gardner.
The Washington Post adds that “there’s no indication Warren had anything to gain by reporting herself as Native American on the Texas bar card.”
As The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-warren-i-have-more-indian-blood-she-does-frank-camp">previously reported</a>, The Washington Post article notes that from 1986 to 1995, Warren listed herself as a “minority” in the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) directory. Additionally, from 1995 to 2004, Harvard Law School reportedly listed Warren as Native American on forms relating to affirmative action.
The Harvard Law School listing allegedly began well after Warren had been hired. Additionally, according to the outlet, Warren’s ethnicity listing at the University of Pennsylvania changed to “Native American” in December of 1989, two years after being hired.
Warren was even asked when she knew she wasn’t Native American during an appearance on “The Breakfast Club” in May, co-hosted by Charlamagne tha God.
“How long did you hold onto that?” he asked, noting the Texas Bar registration card. “Why’d you do that?”
Warren replied: “You know, so, it’s what I believed. Like I said, it’s what I learned from my family.”
Charlamagne tha God didn’t appear satisfied, asking: “When did you find out you weren’t?”
Warren stumbled. “Well, it’s, I&#8217;m not a person of color. I&#8217;m not a citizen of a tribe – and tribal citizenship is an important distinction.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none">
REMINDER: Elizabeth Warren has not addressed when she learned that she is not Native American.
Back in May, she refused to answer TWICE when asked at what point she learned that she wasn&#8217;t not Native American. <a href="https://t.co/xRnFBveqiT">pic.twitter.com/xRnFBveqiT</a>
— Nathan Brand (@NathanBrandWA) <a href="https://twitter.com/NathanBrandWA/status/1203065322120646656?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 6, 2019</a></blockquote>
Despite all this mess, Warren is still seen by many progressives as a possible lock for the Democratic nomination. However, recent polling out of Iowa and New Hampshire (the first two primary/caucus states) show Warren falling, and rival Pete Buttigieg rising.
According to the RealClearPolitics polling average, Warren currently sits in third place in Iowa with 17.7% of the vote. Buttigieg and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) rank first and second with 24% and 18.3%, respectively.
In New Hampshire, Warren faces almost identical problems, coming in third place with 14.3%, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. Once again, Buttigieg and Sanders have taken first and second place with 20% and 17%, respectively.
In Nevada, Warren is behind Former Vice President Joe Biden by nine points, and in South Carolina, the senator is a whopping 19% down on Biden. In North Carolina (though the polling there is not as fresh), Warren falls 17% below Biden.
Warren sits atop the polls in only two states for which RealClearPolitics is keeping tabs. In California, which will hold its primary on Super Tuesday (March 3, 2020), Warren currently captures 21.5% support to Biden’s 21.3% support. In Massachusetts, the state from which Warren hails as a senator, Warren has 28.5% to second place Biden’s 22%.
Warren has also taken a dive in national polling.
Following a brief rise in October and early-November during which time she threatened to take the top spot from Biden, Warren has tumbled back down to third place. As of publication, Warren sits at 14.2% support in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls, Behind Biden at 27.8% and Sanders at 15.6%.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Warren Faces Ancestry Question At Town Hall: ‘I Shouldn’t Have Done It. I Am Not A Person Of Color’

Elizabeth Warren

On Friday, iconic legacy news institution Newsweek <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/rising-death-rates-among-white-americans-caused-misperceived-threat-their-dominant-social-status-1474038">unintentionally encapsulated</a> leftist myopia and willful ignorance when it comes to one of the great social maladies of our time: Soaring death rates among white Americans. &#8220;Rising death rates among white Americans caused by misperceived treat [sic] to their dominant social status, study shows,&#8221; Newsweek <a href="https://twitter.com/Newsweek/status/1200210310747041794">tweeted</a>.
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Rising death rates among white Americans caused by misperceived treat to their dominant social status, study shows <a href="https://t.co/3zGDznL3cG">https://t.co/3zGDznL3cG</a>
&mdash; Newsweek (@Newsweek) <a href="https://twitter.com/Newsweek/status/1200210310747041794?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 29, 2019</a></blockquote>
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The Newsweek piece cited a new <a href="https://m.phys.org/news/2019-11-loss-social-status-linked-mortality.html">University of Toronto public health study</a> for the proposition that &#8220;rising mortality in white Americans is partly due to perceptions that they are losing social status.&#8221; Newsweek quoted Arjumand Siddiqi, lead author of the study and an associate professor of epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health: &#8220;The anxiety of whites is coming from a misperception that their dominant status in society is being threatened, which is manifesting in multiple forms of psychological and physiological stress. &#8230; Status is a major predictor of health so our team hypothesized that it was a perception among whites that Blacks are economically catching up to them, when, in fact, income inequality and other socioeconomic factors continue to affect Black Americans more unfavorably.&#8221; In other words, &#8220;white anxiety&#8221; is to blame for rising drug/alcohol-induced deaths suicides among white Americans.
Well. It couldn&#8217;t have anything to do with our unprecedented national pandemic of transnational <a href="https://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/obama-hezbollah-drug-trafficking-investigation/">terrorist organization</a>-linked Mexican cartels syncing up with the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50327998">Chinese</a> to commit de facto <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/trump-right-drug-traffickers-heroin-fentanyl-killing-us/">chemical warfare</a> against vulnerable Americans, could it?
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
It&#39;s actually the fentanyl. <a href="https://t.co/91AXUc9c5I">https://t.co/91AXUc9c5I</a>
&mdash; Charles Fain Lehman (@CharlesFLehman) <a href="https://twitter.com/CharlesFLehman/status/1200423168416059393?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 29, 2019</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
It’s totally not due to our porous border and interior enforcement policies and the way the Mexican cartels, mid-level traffickers, and illegal alien foot soldiers all coordinate a national distribution ring of lethal narcotics like fentanyl, right? <a href="https://t.co/AvrqBwged6">https://t.co/AvrqBwged6</a>
&mdash; Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) <a href="https://twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1200423907083390983?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 29, 2019</a></blockquote>
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The reality, as Daniel Horowitz <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/media-willfully-ignores-connection-killer-drugs-illegal-immigration/">wrote</a> back in February for Conservative Review, is that our purported mainstream media vanguards are willfully and deliberately ignorant about the lethal nexus of a weak border security policy, feckless <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-border-wall-nice-interior-enforcement-nicer-josh-hammer">interior enforcement</a>, criminal illegal alien networks operating with impunity throughout the nation&#8217;s interior, and our debilitating drug and overdose epidemics. &#8220;[C]artels not only have control of our border,&#8221; Horowitz observed, &#8220;but operate with latitude on our shores and have endless illegal alien and transnational criminal networks working for them in all our major cities and even mid-sized cities on the East Coast. This is the key to understanding how illegal immigration is driving the drug crisis.&#8221;
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistics">statistics</a> lay bare the statistical reality that is our nation&#8217;s crippling narcotics crisis. According to CBP Office of Field Operations (OFO) nationwide drug seizure statistics, seizures of cocaine more than doubled over the course of fiscal year 2015 to fiscal year 2019: From 38,346 pounds to 89,207 pounds. Over the same time span, OFO seizures of methamphetamine increased from 25,495 pounds to 68,585 pound and OFO seizures of fentanyl increased from a negligible 70 pounds to an astounding 2,545 pounds.
There is a well-orchestrated, well-funded, systemic operation to commit chemical warfare upon this nation&#8217;s interior. Indeed, drug trafficking is likely the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-why-no-one-discussing-drug-trafficking-josh-hammer">single least discussed aspect</a> of the crisis afflicting our beleaguered southern border over the course of the past year. We have an unprecedented glut of deadly narcotics pouring into the nation. And recall that a sugar packet-sized dose of fentanyl can kill a whole room full of people.
To be sure, depressingly large swaths of this country&#8217;s citizenry also suffer from an existential crisis of meaning. Loneliness and despondency are on the rise. All varieties of the nation&#8217;s once-proud institutions seem to be <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-who-will-stand-for-the-forgotten-american">failing middle America</a>, en masse. The need for a politics centered around <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-on-chick-fil-a-political-tribalism-and-the-need-for-national-solidarity">national solidarity</a> has never been greater.
But for goodness&#8217; sake, Newsweek, have the human decency to look just  a little harder at what might be greatly exacerbating soaring rates of white depression and suicide in America. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-federal-government-has-no-more-important-josh-hammer">Securing our border</a> once and for all and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-the-u-s-is-morally-obligated-to-take-on-the-mexican-drug-cartels">cracking down on the cartels</a> is hardly anywhere near a panacea for all the ills afflicting our nation, but stanching the supply of lethal narcotics will surely help. A lot.

Newsweek magazine

HAMMER: Newsweek Highlights The Left’s Willful Ignorance About Our Border And Drug Crises

Drugs

Illegal Immigration

Leftism

Media

Media Bias

Mexico

Newsweek

Southern Border

U.S. Customs and Border Protection

Billionaire founder of BET (Black Entertainment Television) and lifelong Democrat Robert Johnson had some unwelcome comments for his fellow Democrats in a recent interview with CNBC. The current group of Democratic presidential contenders, said Johnson, is incapable of taking down Donald Trump in 2020.
&#8220;If you take a snapshot today, I don&#8217;t think that group is capable of beating Donald Trump, despite what the polls say,&#8221; Johnson told CNBC this week, in comments reported by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/29/robert-johnson-trump/">The Washington Post</a> on Friday.
&#8220;I think the president has always been in a position where it&#8217;s his to lose,&#8221; said Johnson, who the Post notes is &#8220;America&#8217;s first black billionaire.&#8221;
Part of the problem, Johnson suggested, is that the current crop of candidates have gravitated too far left, particularly for most African Americans.
&#8220;I do not see anybody in the Democratic primary race today that is enough in the center where I believe most are the voters are, and particularly where most African Americans are,&#8221; he said.
Trump&#8217;s &#8220;incendiary&#8221; rhetoric, as the Post describes it, has a &#8220;double effect,&#8221; said Johnson: It revs up his base while also prompting Democrats to overreact, which further adds to the president&#8217;s support.
Another problem for Democrats is the historically high employment numbers among African Americans, particularly African American women, as <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/06/economy/black-unemployment-rate/index.html">CNN Business</a> detailed in September (formatting adjusted):
<blockquote>Black unemployment fell to a record low in August, helped by a jump in the number of black women on the job. The unemployment rate for black workers fell to 5.5% from 6%, according to the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2019/09/06/economy/jobs-report-august/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Labor Department data</a>. The previous record low of 5.9% was set in May 2018. The unemployment rate for black women fell to a record 4.4% from 5.2% in July. The unemployment rate for black men crept up to 5.9% from 5.8%. But the previous month&#8217;s rate was a record, so the rate is still near its historic low.</blockquote>
And employment statistics aren&#8217;t just looking good for African Americans, Hispanics are also enjoying record numbers, as CNN explained: &#8220;Unemployment among workers who identify themselves as Hispanic or Latino also fell in August to 4.2%, which matched a record low set earlier this year.&#8221;
In its report Friday, the Post makes a point of attempting to undermine Johnson&#8217;s credibility as a voice for the black community due to his billionaire status.
Johnson&#8217;s &#8220;wealth has drawn criticism from activists who say Johnson is out of touch with many African Americans when it comes to their access to wealth and opportunity,&#8221; the Post underscores, before providing a couple of disparaging quotes about Johnson from leaders of African American organizations.
&#8220;Bob Johnson is not working class. He does not reflect the issue, nor does he even seem like he has the ability to speak to the issues of the working class,&#8221; Black Voters Matter Co-Founder Tosha Brown told the Post in July.
&#8220;[W]hile Mr. Johnson may share the interests of millionaires and billionaires, he&#8217;s out of step with black voters,&#8221; said Black Pac Executive Director Adrianne Shropshire back in July.
In the interview with CNBC, Johnson also addressed Trump indicating after the 2016 election that he might offer him a cabinet position, which Johnson said he made clear he had no interest in pursuing.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tucker-carlson-real-reason-media-hates-b-s-artist-trump-is-exact-opposite-of-what-they-claim">Tucker Carlson: Real Reason Media Hates ‘B.S. Artist’ Trump Is Exact Opposite Of What They Claim</a>

Robert Johnson

BET Founder: No Current Democratic Contender Can Beat Trump

The Hallmark Channel has now been scrutinized for having a lack of religious and racial diversity during its &#8220;Countdown to Christmas&#8221; programming.
According to <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/hallmark-channel-struggles-give-diversity-a-home-holidays-1257946">The Hollywood Reporter </a>(THR), the Hallmark Channel featured just four movies this year with black leads and virtually no other religious representation outside of Judaism and Christianity.
&#8220;Of the network&#8217;s record 24 original holiday movies this season, four of them have black leads,&#8221; reported THR. &#8220;And that&#8217;s down from last year, when five of its 21 original holiday movies had black leads.&#8221;
&#8220;Missing from Hallmark&#8217;s festive roster? Any other religion in the title,&#8221; the report later noted. &#8220;That&#8217;s especially interesting given that Hallmark last year announced that it would be producing two Hanukkah movies in 2019 — &#8216;Holiday Date&#8217; (Dec. 14) and a &#8216;Double Holiday&#8217; (Dec. 22). &#8216;Double Holiday&#8216; is a romance between a woman who is Jewish, while &#8216;Holiday Date&#8217; features a Jewish guy pretending to be &#8216;Mr. Christmas.'&#8221;
Speaking on THR&#8217;s TV podcast, Bill Abbott, CEO of Crown Media Family Networks (Hallmark&#8217;s parent company), said that the allegation that Hallmark has no diversity is unfair.
&#8220;I think that generalization isn&#8217;t fair either, that we just have Christmas with white leads,&#8221; Abbott said. &#8220;In terms of broadening out the demographic, it’s something we’re always thinking about, always considering and we’ll continue to make the movies where the best scripts are delivered to us and what we think have the most potential.&#8221;
As to why the two movies featuring Jewish characters did not use the word &#8220;Hanukkah&#8221; in the title, Abbott said the programming has never been overtly religious, arguing that Christmas is more of a &#8220;seasonal celebration.&#8221;
&#8220;We are very proud of those movies and we think those movies really reflect an across-the-board approach to celebrating the holiday season,&#8221; Abbott said. &#8220;It’s hard if we start to slice up the pie, so to speak, and make movies based off of specific holidays. So, if we were to look at Kwanzaa, for example, or other religions and how they celebrate the holidays it’s a little bit more difficult because we don’t look at Christmas from a religious point of view, it’s more a seasonal celebration. [O]nce you start to slice it more finely within individual religions it’s a little bit tougher to necessarily tell that story in a way that doesn’t involve religion and we always want to stay clear of religion or controversy.&#8221;
&#8220;I think Christmas has become almost a secular type of holiday more than Hanukkah, which really does have more of a religious feel,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;I think Hanukkah, from a religious point of view, is not necessarily as commercial and not necessarily as much about gift-giving and it’s really about what those eight nights signify from the religious point of view. So I’m not ruling it out as something we would not do but this is kind of our first foray into this type of double holiday mix with a lot of Hanukkah in both movies [and] a lot of the celebration of how those nights are celebrated and experienced by those who practice the religion.&#8221;
Abbott did, however, say that the Hallmark Channel has an interest in featuring other diverse leads, including LGBT.

Hallmark Channel&#8217;s Countdown To Christmas Celebration And VIP Screening Of &#8220;Christmas At Holly Lodge&#8221;

Hallmark Channel Blasted For Lack Of Inclusion, Diversity

Diversity

LGBT

Religion

Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett reportedly alleged on Wednesday in an appeal to the NFL that Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Mason Rudolph called him a racial slur in the moments leading up to a recent on-field fight between the two players.
&#8220;Garrett made the allegation as part of his initial comments during the appeal hearing in New York, sources said,&#8221; ESPN&#8217;s Adam Schefter <a href="https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/28130757/during-appeal-myles-garrett-accused-mason-rudolph-using-racial-slur">reported</a>. &#8220;It created an argumentative exchange between both sides about whether the allegation was permissible to be used in the appeal at that time.&#8221;
&#8220;When the allegation was made, appeals officer James Thrash remained stoic and took copious notes, sources said,&#8221; ESPN added. &#8220;He did ask Garrett a question about how he might act differently in the future, and Garrett conveyed he would not let events escalate like that again in the future.&#8221;
The Steelers, Rudolph, and Rudolph&#8217;s lawyer all strongly denied the accusation from Garrett.
Steelers spokesman Burt Lauten said: &#8220;Mason vehemently denies the report of being accused of using a racial slur during the incident Thursday night in Cleveland. He will not discuss this accusation any further and his focus remains on preparation for Sunday&#8217;s game against the Cincinnati Bengals.&#8221;
Rudolph&#8217;s attorney, Timothy M. Younger, said: &#8220;According to ESPN, in his appeal, Myles Garrett falsely asserted that Mason Rudolph uttered a racial slur toward him, prior to swinging a helmet at Mason&#8217;s uncovered head, in a desperate attempt to mitigate his suspension. This is a lie. This false allegation was never asserted by Garrett in the aftermath of the game, never suggested prior to the hearing, and conspicuously absent in the apology published by the Browns and adopted by Garrett. The malicious use of this wild and unfounded allegation is an assault on Mason&#8217;s integrity which is far worse than the physical assault witnessed on Thursday. This is reckless and shameful. We will have no further comment.&#8221;
Garrett&#8217;s appeal to the NFL comes after he was suspended indefinitely for the November 15th incident in which Garrett ripped Rudolph&#8217;s helmet off his head and hit him in the head with it.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Not sure how they let Garrett play again this season after this. Yanking Rudolph by the face mask until his helmet came off, then hitting him with his helmet in the head? <a href="https://t.co/hfbqHt43uo">pic.twitter.com/hfbqHt43uo</a>
— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) <a href="https://twitter.com/mattdizwhitlock/status/1195204456972988416?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 15, 2019</a></blockquote>
The following day, Garrett <a href="http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000001076995/article/browns-de-myles-garrett-suspended-indefinitely">responded</a>, &#8220;Last night, I made a terrible mistake. I lost my cool and what I did was selfish and unacceptable. I know that we are all responsible for our actions and I can only prove my true character through my actions moving forward. I want to apologize to Mason Rudolph, my teammates, our entire organization, our fans and to the NFL. I know I have to be accountable for what happened, learn from my mistake and I fully intend to do so.&#8221;
Browns owners Dee and Jimmy Haslam responded to the incident the following day, saying, &#8220;We are extremely disappointed in what transpired last evening at the end of our game. There is no place for that in football and that is not reflective of the core values we strive for as an organization. We sincerely apologize to Mason Rudolph and the Pittsburgh Steelers. Myles Garrett has been a good teammate and member of our organization and community for the last three years but his actions last night were completely unacceptable. We understand the consequences from the league for his actions.&#8221;

Myles Garrett Mason Rudolph

Myles Garrett Makes New Allegation Against Mason Rudolph In Appeal To NFL

Racism

Colin Kaepernick — the former mediocre NFL quarterback who coincidentally discovered a passion for “social justice” once his star had faded after an abysmal 2015 campaign when he lost 6 of the 8 games he played and posted only 6 touchdowns against 5 interceptions — was scheduled to workout for 25 teams this past Saturday. The circumstances of this workout were unusual.
Kaepernick has been out of the league since 2016, the same year that he began his infamous Anthem protest. But perhaps more salient to his three years of unemployment is the fact that he went 1-10 that season, posting only 2,241 yards passing and 16 touchdowns after initially failing to beat out Blaine Gabbert, which is the NFL equivalent of not being able to outperform Sean Spicer in your dance troupe. Kaepernick has done well for himself during his period of joblessness, signing a multi-million dollar Nike deal and being hailed across the media as a civil rights martyr. But the point is that he’d fallen out of his short-lived prime well before his &#8220;Star-Spangled Banner&#8221; antics, and then he spent three years shooting Nike ads instead of playing football.
I am not aware of any other case of the NFL holding a private, midseason workout (on a Saturday, the day before a game day, no less), attended by 25 scouts, for a backup-level talent who’s been out of the league for 35 months. Yet that is what Kaepernick was given. There is no conceivable football reason for the NFL to go to these lengths for Kaepernick. He’s not a star player and never was a star player — and even if he was a star player, it still would be highly unusual and probably unprecedented for the league to stage an event of this sort just for him.
But it wasn’t good enough for Kaepernick. The Nike salesman pulled out at the last minute, apparently deciding sometime on Saturday morning that he needed the event to be open to the media. The NFL didn’t want media, never agreed to have media, and for perfectly understandable reasons. They weren’t looking to host a Kaepernickapalooza media spectacle in week 11 of the regular season. They weren’t going to play host to a televised PR stunt for an out-of-work, 32-year-old, former bench-rider. Why would they? How could any sane or reasonable person expect them to?
Alas, Kaepernick is plenty sane but not reasonable, or else his reasons are entirely separate from the reasons of a real athlete who really wants to make his way onto an NFL roster. So, the man who once wore pig socks mocking the police during a practice, canceled the league-hosted event and staged his own at the last minute, complete with news cameras and journalists who think a guy is a Hall of Famer if he can throw the ball 50 yards to an uncovered receiver.
Kaepernick made another conspicuous wardrobe decision, sporting a “Kunta Kinte” shirt, implicitly comparing himself with a slave. I admit that I am no history professor, but I’m not sure that the plight of a multi-millionaire who had to settle for hocking shoes because he couldn’t get a job as a professional football player really bears any resemblance to historical slavery.
<iframe title="The Kaepernick Con | The Matt Walsh Show Ep. 373" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-Jho_URAZxE?start=175&#038;feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
As if the “look at me” nature of the thing wasn’t clear enough, Kaepernick closed out the festivities by ranting to reporters about how the “the 32 teams” and “Roger Goodell” are “running from the truth” and “running from the people.” Now, I’ve been on my share of job interviews in my life but I never considered canceling on my prospective employer at the last minute, demanding that he come to me rather than me to him, and then accusing him of “running from the truth” when he fails to immediately hire me. That seems very much like the strategy of a man who doesn’t actually want the job he is pretending to seek.
Consider how the whole thing might have gone if Kaepernick sincerely wanted to play football. He would have attempted to schedule his workout during the off season, when a number of teams are still making basic roster decisions. Then he would have showed up to the venue in a spirit of gratitude and eagerness. He would not have worn a t-shirt advertising his martyr-complex. He would not have scolded the NFL in front of news cameras. He would not have insisted on news cameras in the first place, because he’s applying to be an NFL quarterback not a cable news talking head. His post-workout comments would have focused on — imagine this — football, and he would have expressed a deep desire to make a roster and help a team win games. Kaepernick said none of that, because he’s not interested in playing football. He is a self-promoting fraud and this is his (very profitable, I must admit) con.
On a pragmatic level, it’s hard to argue with Kaepernick’s logic. With his diminished skillset and advanced age (by football standards), he could at best hope to be a journeyman second-stringer, hopping from one roster to the other, waiting for a starter to go down so he can fill in for a few games. Robert Griffin III’s case is probably analogous. He’s three years younger than Kap, and was once more promising, but now he earns a couple million dollars a year as Lamar Jackson’s mentor and backup. It’s a nice way to make a living, to be sure, but not as rich or glamorous as the life of a Nike-sponsored professional martyr. Kaepernick has carved out the latter niche for himself, and a comparatively humble existence as a comparatively low-paid benchwarmer just does not have the same appeal. That’s why Kap and his team of PR reps have made sure to stay in the zone between trying for a job in the NFL and actually getting a job in the NFL. That zone, as they’ve discovered, is filled with money and clout.
With all of this in mind, it would be incredibly stupid and counterproductive for any team to offer Kaepernick a contract. Of course, you can’t put it past organizations like the Jets and the Bengals to do incredibly stupid and counterproductive things, so I’ll never say never. Nonetheless, he is a washed-up, second-string quarterback who, in the very best case scenario, if he is able to reach the same meager heights he fell from in 2016, might get you 2,000 yards and a dozen or so touchdowns. Most backups in the league can do that, or better, and none of them bring a media circus along with them, nor do they threaten to turn your fanbase against you, nor do they have the same potential to rip your locker room apart, nor are they likely to call you a racist when you cut them.
Kaepernick’s production, even in the best case, could not possibly come close to compensating for the massive downside. I’m not sure that Tom Brady in his prime could have compensated for a downside so steep. And Kap is no Tom Brady, to say the least.
Maybe, though, a contract offer from the Bengals would be the most poetic result of all this. After all of his maneuvering to avoid an offer, it would be quite delicious to see him backed into a corner where has to actually reject one, thereby revealing the whole charade for what it is and always was. Or else, he’ll have to admit defeat and accept a fate worse than death: becoming a Bengals quarterback. As far as I see it, either of those options would be a fitting and deserved end to the Colin Kaepernick saga.

Colin Kaepernick

WALSH: Colin Kaepernick Is A Conman, Not A Football Player

This week, The Atlantic released its newest issue, provocatively titled &#8220;How to Stop a Civil War.&#8221; Leading its collection of essays is a fascinating piece by Yoni Applebaum. In it, Applebaum posits that at the crux of America&#8217;s vitriolic politics lies demographic change: &#8220;The United States is undergoing a transition perhaps no rich and stable democracy has ever experienced: Its historically dominant group is on its way to becoming a political minority — and its minority groups are asserting their co-equal rights and interests.&#8221;
This, he suggests, has led to an impasse for the center-right, which refuses to adapt to changing demographics, instead doubling down on President Donald Trump&#8217;s white, working-class base. Applebaum explains, &#8220;When a group that has traditionally exercised power comes to believe that its eclipse is inevitable, and that the destruction of all it holds dear will follow, it will fight to preserve what it has — whatever the cost.&#8221;
But Applebaum&#8217;s thesis doesn&#8217;t explain why, in his view, conservatives have abandoned the attempt to persuade new populations. Applebaum himself acknowledges that a &#8220;conservatism defined by ideas can hold its own against progressivism, winning converts to its principles and evolving with each generation.&#8221; Why, then, have conservatives supposedly given up?
The answer lies in a simple truth: Conservatives haven&#8217;t despaired of winning over new converts.
While a slight majority of Republicans believe that immigration should be reduced, pluralities or majorities of Republicans in the majority of polls believe that immigration is good for the country; a heavy majority of Republicans favor a &#8220;merit-based&#8221; immigration approach.
Conservative opposition to increased immigration isn&#8217;t driven by fears of demographic change. It&#8217;s driven by fear of ideological change. And that fear of ideological change is actually driven by Democrats&#8217; radicalism — and their overt suggestion that demographic change will provide the fodder for that radicalism.
Applebaum rightly states, &#8220;The United States possesses a strong radical tradition, but its most successful social movements have generally adopted the language of conservatism, framing their calls for change as an expression of America&#8217;s founding ideals rather than as a rejection of them.&#8221;
But today&#8217;s successful social movements — the movements of the Democratic left — no longer bother with such niceties. Instead, they declare that America was, has been and always will be a racist place, riven by hierarchies of power, a corrupt structure to be overturned by that emerging demographic majority. These movements overtly call for curbing essential American freedoms — freedom of speech, freedom to bear arms, freedom of religion — in order to overthrow the corrupt power structure. The Democratic left then insists that immigration levels be increased both legally and illegally and suggests that its opponents are driven by unbridled racism.
In essence, the Democrats have decided that rather than expanding the application of American principles to new groups, they prefer to fundamentally change the definition of American principles and utilize immigration policy to facilitate that change. No wonder conservatives have responded by calling for immigration restrictions.
Conservatism must indeed root out and destroy any elements of race-driven policy from its midst. Conservatism speaks every language and can reside in any human heart. If the left wishes to avoid a civil war, it can start by doing the same: refraining from the argument that demographic change innately signals rewriting the definition of Americanism, and arguing in favor of that revision.

Migrant Caravan

SHAPIRO: Are Conservative Immigration Restrictionists Racist?

Conservatism

Immigration

Progressivism

Ben Shapiro

WATCH: Ben Shapiro Dismantles The Left’s Claim That America Was Built On Slavery

American History

Slavery

Boston University&#8217;s minority student group Black BU issued an open letter to the university community Tuesday expressing their feelings of being &#8220;abandoned, triggered, frustrated, disheartened, devalued, infuriated, overwhelmed, ignored,&#8221; and &#8220;embarrassed of the university&#8221; because it is allowing Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro to give a speech on Wednesday titled &#8220;America Was Not Built On Slavery; It Was Built On Freedom.&#8221;
The letter, which was obtained and published by <a href="https://www.yaf.org/news/embarrassed-of-bu-shapiros-boston-university-lecture-title-triggers-black-bu/">Young America&#8217;s Foundation</a>, the organization sponsoring the Shapiro event, begins by stressing what Shapiro&#8217;s famous tagline directly addresses: &#8220;feelings.&#8221;
&#8220;Abandoned, triggered, frustrated, disheartened, devalued, infuriated, overwhelmed, ignored, embarrassed of BU. This is how we feel. This is how BU has made us feel,&#8221; the student group writes (screenshot of letter below). &#8220;This is how our peers, the Young Americans for Freedom and those who condone their actions have made us feel. Facts don&#8217;t care about feelings, but we look beyond the facts to the faces and fake smiles that greet us day in and out on this campus. This reminds us that we are not one BU, that BU is not designed for us, and this BU does not belong to use just as our bodies and our minds do not and have not belonged to us since our rights as human beings were stripped away in the wake of slavery.&#8221;
The student org then specifies what has elicited such strong emotions among members: the title of Shapiro&#8217;s speech. &#8220;We do not speak for the 900 Black faces on this campus, but we do speak for the 133 students who mobilized on November 11, 2019 within 151 minutes to denounce this school&#8217;s support of Ben Shapiro&#8217;s actions, words, and most importantly, the name of this event: &#8216;American Was Not Built On Slavery; It Was Built On Freedom.'&#8221;
Though Shapiro has repeatedly and forcefully condemned the evils of slavery and addressed its economic and societal role in the U.S. until it was finally abolished through the Civil War, the student group accuses Shapiro of &#8220;denying slavery&#8221; and its economic role in the creation of the U.S.
&#8220;To deny slavery, and its economic role in the creation of the US as a nation is to deny the systematic degradation of Black bodies, the generational trauma, natal alienation, and social death that has marked and affected Black communities in the US since 1619, the birth of slavery on US soil as we know, and consequently, the birth of America.&#8221;
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html">The New York Times</a> has helped popularize the concept that the U.S. was not founded in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence, but in 1619 when the first African slaves arrived in the colonies. The alternative &#8220;founding&#8221; date allows the social justice left to describe the U.S. as indelibly defined by slavery and institutional racism despite the abolishment of the evil institution over a century and half ago and all the progress since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in eliminating institutional racism.
&#8220;It&#8217;s important to reject and refute language that emboldens the ideologies of white supremacy,&#8221; the letter continues. &#8220;Rejecting and dismissing the impact of slavery furthers the plight of Black people, and it is on us to combat this racist hegemony that exists.&#8221;
&#8220;This school constantly boasts about their most famous alumni, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but by endorsing a conversation titled, &#8216;America Was Not Built On Slavery; It Was Built On Freedom&#8217; this institution is ostracizing the very community that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. fought for,&#8221; the group claims. &#8220;What about our ancestors who were exploited and forced to work for free. Are they forgotten? Will we continue to deny the magnitude of this country&#8217;s past? The foundation of this country is instutionalized racism that continues to affect our community today, and by allowing a conversation with this title, they are ignoring a past, present, and hope for the future that affects us every day. We cannot escape this reality. Our voices will be heard. We will not be silent because it is our duty to combat the negligence that this title creates.&#8221;
The student group then issues &#8220;not a plea or a protest&#8221; but a &#8220;demand&#8221;: &#8220;So, we come to you with this. It is not a plea or a protest, but rather a demand that for once, BU turns to the students who decry instances of passive and active, micro-aggressive actions and acknowledge our disdain and the sour taste on our lips leftover by the administration&#8217;s compliance with hateful speech. We demand to be heard, to be listened to, and to finally be acknowledged as our own advocates.&#8221;
They then rebuke those &#8220;allies&#8221; who assume they need their &#8220;megaphone&#8221; to speak out. &#8220;To the students who extend their allyship, thank you, but we speak for ourselves and do not need your megaphone to amplify our already vocal voices.&#8221; Next, they turn their focus on the administration, to whom they issue a warning: &#8220;To the administration, know that our eyes are wide open, we see you, and know that your actions do not go unwatched.&#8221;
Finally, the group addresses their &#8220;true allies,&#8221; including Palestinian students and members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and by which they expressly do not mean students with &#8220;privilege to protest,&#8221; as if some groups are not allowed this First Amendment right. &#8220;To our true allies, the Palestinian students, the LGBTQIA+ students, and any of the other students whose power does not lie in their privilege to protest, we stand in solidarity with you and among you,&#8221; the letter reads. &#8220;We keep our minds and hearts open and welcome you with love into our community.&#8221;
&#8220;But before we close, we remind you why we began,&#8221; Black BU concludes. &#8220;America was, in fact, built on slavery, on the backs of Black people, plagued with pain, sorrow, and disregard, so this brings us to ask those who condone this event and title: whose Freedom?&#8221;
In response, Shapiro told The Daily Wire, &#8220;It&#8217;s supremely typical of campus radicals to dismiss the content of a speech they haven&#8217;t heard, and to pre-emptively mischaracterize its content. But listening is more difficult than posturing.&#8221;
&#8220;Suffice it to say, I have never and will never downplay the horrors or legacy of slavery,&#8221; said Shapiro. &#8220;America is, however, the greatest force for freedom in world history; the darknesses of our past are an essential part of our story, but they are not what makes America unique and special.&#8221;
&#8220;As to the question — whose freedom does America stand for? — the answer is, all of ours. Which is why they have the right to protest, and I have the right to speak,&#8221; he added. &#8220;I look forward to all of us exercising our rights tomorrow.&#8221;
Though in their letter the Black BU accuses Shapiro of promoting &#8220;white supremacy,&#8221; Shapiro&#8217;s speech at Boston University comes less than a week after his <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-shapiro-dismantles-the-alt-right-and-radical-lefts-dangerous-game">speech at Stanford</a> in which he dedicated a majority of his speech to dismantling the racist, &#8220;white identity&#8221; ideology espoused by the Alt-Right.
Below is a screenshot of the Black BU open letter via <a href="https://www.yaf.org/news/embarrassed-of-bu-shapiros-boston-university-lecture-title-triggers-black-bu/">YAF</a>:
<img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-31580 lazyloaded" src="https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-1024x503.png" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" srcset="https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-1024x503.png 1024w, https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-300x147.png 300w, https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-768x377.png 768w, https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-67x33.png 67w, https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-480x236.png 480w, https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-600x295.png 600w" alt="" width="1024" height="503" data-lazy-srcset="https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-1024x503.png 1024w, https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-300x147.png 300w, https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-768x377.png 768w, https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-67x33.png 67w, https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-480x236.png 480w, https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-600x295.png 600w" data-lazy-sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" data-lazy-src="https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-1024x503.png" data-was-processed="true" />
&nbsp;

Boston University Student Group ‘Triggered’ By Ben Shapiro Speech Title; Shapiro Responds

Boston University

Kanye West continued to spread his message of independent thinking this week, when he advised black Americans that they do not always have to vote for Democrats.
During an interview at the Fast Company Innovation Festival, West said that the phrase &#8220;black power&#8221; does not mean voting for the Democratic Party forever.
&#8220;Own your power. Your power is not to just vote Democrat for the rest of our lives. That’s not the power,&#8221; West said, as reported by <a href="https://pagesix.com/2019/11/07/kanye-west-goes-on-whirlwind-nyc-trip-promoting-yeezy-presidential-run/">Page Six</a>. &#8220;The power is when I talk to my lawyer … I put on my trench coat and said, &#8216;We’re moving these factories to America, and that’s how it’s going to be&#8217; — and it’s lovely. We moved the headquarters to Cody, Wyoming … Our goal is to bring the manufacturing back to America — South America, North America — bring it back stateside and to present jobs for people back here.&#8221;
Kanye West has been on a bit of a MAGA roll with the release of his latest album &#8220;Jesus is King.&#8221; Speaking with radio personality Big Boy in a recent interview, West decried cancel culture as well as Democratic policies that have allegedly brainwashed black Americans into a cycle of self-destruction.
&#8220;I’ve been canceled before. That was canceled culture. Who told you that my career would be over? The same people that are telling you that you can’t have a right to say who you will vote for,&#8221; <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-kanye-west-trashes-cancel-culture-racial-politics-abortion-in-lengthy-interview">West said</a>. &#8220;Those people will be soon to take Jesus out of school. Those people will be soon to remove Jesus, period, from America, which is the Bible Belt. Those people will be so mad. Come on, man.&#8221;
Kanye West went on to lament how Democrats have essentially brainwashed black Americans into voting for them with promises of food stamps and abortion.
&#8220;We’re brainwashed out here, bro. Come on, man. This is a free man talking,&#8221; said West. &#8220;Democrats had us voting for Democrats with food stamps for years. What are you talking about guns in the 80s, taking the fathers out the home, Plan B, lowering our votes, making us abort children.&#8221;
Following his attacks on abortion, Kanye West further extolled family values, when he said that families should have more children, referring to it as the &#8220;richest thing you can have.&#8221;
&#8220;[I want] seven kids. The richest thing that you can have is as many children as possible,&#8221; West said on &#8220;Carpool Karaoke.&#8221;
Prior to that, the 42-year-old rapper told Billboard in an interview that he told his staff working on the &#8220;Jesus is King&#8221; album to avoid premarital sex and to fast regularly.
&#8220;There were times where I was asking people not to have premarital sex while they were working on the album,&#8221; West said. &#8220;When people pray together and fast together, the power is increased.&#8221;
Kanye West also described himself as an instrument of God to help &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/kanye-says-he-asked-jesus-is-king-employees-not-to-have-premarital-sex-hits-porn">spread the gospel</a>&#8221; of Jesus Christ.
&#8220;Now that I’m in service to Christ, my job is to spread the gospel, to let people know what Jesus has done for me,&#8221; said West. &#8220;I’ve spread a lot of things. There was a time I was letting you know what high fashion had done for me, I was letting you know what the Hennessey had done for me, but now I’m letting you know what Jesus has done for me, and in that I’m no longer a slave, I’m a son now, a son of God. I’m free.&#8221;

Kanye West

Kanye West: Blacks Don’t Have To Vote For Democrats

A black officer who fatally shot a white woman wielding scissors and using the N-word has been cleared of wrongdoing.
On October 25, Officer Patrick Edmonds, Jr., of the Bossier City Police Department in Louisiana, responded to a disturbance call from the LaQuinta Inn.
Shannon Rupert, a 45-year-old white woman, was wielding a pair a scissors and on the phone in the hotel&#8217;s lobby, where she was staying.
“The officer gave multiple verbal commands to Rupert to put down the weapon,&#8221; a statement from the Bossier City Police Department said, according to <a href="https://www.ksla.com/2019/10/25/large-police-presence-reported-bossier-city-hotel/">KSLA News 12</a>. &#8220;Rupert then aggressively approached the officer with scissors in hand. The officer fired two rounds from his department-issued handgun, striking Rupert in the upper torso.”
Rupert was pronounced dead from the gun shot wounds at a nearby hospital.
Graphic footage from Officer Edmonds&#8217; body camera, which can be viewed below, shows Rupert holding the scissors; she can also be heard calling the officer a &#8220;n*****&#8221; and daring him to shoot her.
&#8220;You&#8217;re going to have to shoot me, n*****,&#8221; the woman tells the officer before walking over to him. Officer Edmonds promptly fatally shoots Rupert, firing off two rounds.
&#8220;What I am disputing is why they could not have used a Taser instead or the dummy bullets because those dummy bullets will knock you down,&#8221; questioned Melinda Peterson, Rupert&#8217;s cousin.
As noted by KSLA, &#8220;It is not yet clear whether Bossier City police officers are issued Tasers.&#8221;
&#8220;I knew she had been into drugs really bad,&#8221; Peterson noted of Rupert. &#8220;I tried helping her. I tried talking to her to see if maybe we could get her some help, a recourse. Getting her into rehab or anything like that. She was just out of it.&#8221;
On Friday, a review of the incident determined that Edmonds&#8217; fatal shooing of Rupert was justified.
&#8220;Based on all evidence reviewed, it is my firm opinion that no crime was committed by the officer as his actions constituted justifiable homicide,&#8221; District Attorney Schuyler Marvin said in a letter to Police Chief Shane McWilliams, <a href="https://www.ksla.com/2019/11/01/da-clears-bossier-city-officer-fatal-shooting/">KSLA</a> reported.
&#8220;The circumstances confronting such officer were such that a reasonable belief existed that he was in imminent danger of losing his life or suffering great bodily harm, and the discharge of his firearm was necessary for the prevention of a possible lethal threat,&#8221; the letter continued, noting that Rupert &#8220;appeared highly animated and erratic in the time period preceding the officer&#8217;s arrival.&#8221;
&#8220;The officer conveyed a clear, concise warning of what would happen if the deceased continued to approach while armed. In immediate response to the officer&#8217;s warning, the deceased raised both arms while holding the scissors and moved towards the officer within a distance that appeared to be more than seven or possibly five feet when the officer fired two shots, in immediate succession,&#8221; the letter detailed. &#8220;The deceased&#8217;s intent of movement toward the officer is certain as her momentum continues to carry her forward even after she is shot. The events described herein happened much more quickly than described. Investigating officers interviewed witnesses who were on location before and during the events.&#8221;
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Video: Black Officer Fatally Shoots White Woman Wielding Scissors, Using N-Word

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